Macisle

Eeeeeh.  Picking a side in the Bosnian conflict is much like picking which person with Hitler as one of their multiple personalities you like best.  To classify the Bosnians or the Croats as "islamists and nazis" is to show a pretty severe bias to say the least.  The historical alignment of the Croats with the Nazis is no worse than the Vichy French policemen, the various Hungarian/Romanian/etc German allies or the Germans themselves.  The Croats had their own reasons to want to leave Yugoslavia, and to dismiss them out of hand by historical association says a lot about your position.  Doubly so on the "islamist" position given the fairly small role of the wahhabist type fighters vs nationalists who just happen to be Muslim.
 
As the case was, the Serbs made themselves "the tallest nail" when it came time for hammers to drop given their belligerence towards UN forces, the actual Serb run concentration camps, and the bloody mess of Sarajevo.  The other factions might not have been clean, but they're sort of a dark charcoal dirty vs the pitch black the Serbs managed to pull off.  
 
I won't even dignify the organ trade thing with a comment.  However the abuses of the Serbian forces in Kosovo are fairly well documented, and while the acts of the Kosovar forces are not exactly stellar examples of human rights and moral pillars of the community, they fought with the advantage of being less able to do damage to Serbian civilians, being aligned with the historical US support of self determination in government (when it does not strongly affect US foreign policy for the negative of course), and the stigma the Serbs still had after the early 90's fighting.  
 
True.  But please note how much control the US has exerted over Kosovo.  You'll find it was generally limited to peace keeping operations (which at least tried to equally protect remaining Serbs). Kosovo could hold an election to rejoin Serbia, or join Russia or New Zealand for that matter and the US would be limited generally to disapproval (and much confusion needless to say in the case of Russia or New Zealand).
 
 
I have to say, having read up on Milosevic, his secret support of the ethnic Serbs was about as subtle as a sledgehammer falling through a skylight.  
 
In terms of the actual conflict, I'll grant it's entirely possible BOTH sides were pretty wrong, but the Serbian ability to do harm greatly outweighed the Kosovar ability to resist.  And this inevitably lead to a lopsided view of affairs.  As the case was the Serbs could have simply toned down the campaign a bit, but the resulting refugee crisis, combined with imminently believable accusations of Serbian atrocities (which certainly did not happen to the extent claimed, but in the context of Serbian actions circa 1993 were not out of line to believe) then paired with the concerns of a re-ignition of the wider former Yugoslavia fighting led to a fairly strong anti-Serbian response.
 
Looking back on it in 2015, there's a lot apparent that 1999 couldn't see or anticipate.  However in refering to the NATO involvement:
 
1. There was verifiable "bad" things being done to the civilians in Kosovo by the Serbian military.
2. There was a strong case even worse things were being done.
3. The conflict was occurring in an area that was widely viewed as a powder keg, and that continued fighting might spread throughout the region.   
 
All the reasons for getting involved in Kosovo, minus the "wag the dog" allegations stemming from Clinton's sexscapades revolved around reacting to a humanitarian crisis, with at least some verifiable crimes against humanity.  This is a strong difference from something like, say the Russians swooping into the Crimea to save Russians from a total lack of actual actions taken against ethnic Russians, before adding a major port to Russia proper through a fake election thank you very much.
 
 
Rather famously, a French dude I actually respect somewhat said "France has no friends, only interests."  The inconsistencies are only inconsistencies if you forget that.  That said, the US is a strongly idealistic nation that's heavily paired with often very pragmatic decision making.  So while we extol freedom justice and the usual, there's a practical limit to how much we can do to bolster those things in many countries.  And often we have to work through governments or groups of people we genuinely do not like, but represent the only point of leverage we have in a region (see the Saudis).  
 
So to that end, I'm actually quite sure Clinton did care, and quite possibly does care deeply about the Serbs and Albainians.  But he's the leader of a country, and having led stuff (on a much smaller scale!) you're frequently asked to pick the best of the worst set of choices.  And given the historical portion of the Clinton administration in which the US missed the chance to head off several mass killings (and indeed, one of the few recognized genocides!) reacting strongly to what appeared to be another set of mass killings in the same damn region that just got done with the last round of mass killings must have been setting of some alarm bells.
 
When it comes to no good or bad guys, I disagree strongly.  We all fall broadly on some scale of morality, with the overwhelming population falling somewhere in the middle.  All humans for the most part broadly chose to make the most moral choice available given the circumstances (and when they do evil , it's frequently justified in a moral context).  This whole "only the alive and dead" mentality to me is a cheap copout from having to recognize the results of one's actions and the consequences of choices.  I strive, and will continue to strive to have been a positive influence to the world at large, because that is what's "right" and I will refuse to accept the world simply falls into dead/not dead.
 
 
The US is George Reeves.  The rest of the world at large sees us as Superman, and expects Superman level performance and capabilities, while totally ignoring its still just George Reeves in a suit trying very hard to be Superman.  When Russian troops steal parts of Ukraine?  Eh.  That's what Russia does.  France kills a bunch of Africans while meddling?  France has always done that.  Etc, etc, etc.  But there's this expectation America is "better" than those things, and by virtue of being the one remaining super-power level nation in the world, is capable of accomplishing anything if it tried, that is often the first step on the road to massive disappointment because, again at the end of the day we're just George Reeves (if George Reeves helped end both World Wars, was the number one provider of international aid, a strong supporter of free elections, and in general a  deeply flawed person with a mess of skeletons in the closet, but often decent enough man most of the time).
 
 
Thing is, we've wandered into this weird realm where terrorism is now bigger than simple law enforcement.  If we were at war with Cuba or something, and flew drones all over blotting out Cuban soldiers left and right, no one would bat an eye.  However because the fighters we're facing, no matter how deadly their intent or desires are, are not uniformed, somehow that's different.
 
We're effectively at war with their organizations, if they're nation states or not.  We've been directly attacked by the folks we're meatsaucing all over the landscape.  I don't feel the lack of nation-state makes them somehow more deserving of due process than someone wearing a uniform for Cuba.  
 
 
It's again, not a "new" concept, just new tools.  Looking at the French and Brits during the Cold War in their colonies (or recently former colonies) there's still a pattern of targeted killing vs arrest and apprehension.  Same deal with nearly every COIN campaign in history.  The only difference this time is technology allows for a wider more distributed insurgent network, and allows for a more active "kill" network from the other end.
 
Same game, difference pieces if you will.
 
 
That's fine, but how is international affairs a reasonable justification for flying planes into the World Trade Center?  Does European hypocrisy justify American terrorists shooting up cheese factories because we're not allowed to sell "Parmesan" cheese now?  
 
The west is a handy thing to blame for internal problems.  You listen to many of the anti-American, anti-Western speakers, and it's well beyond objections to current events, and well into the realm of fantasy and make believe levels of US/Western crimes.
 
 
That is not at all what I said, or believe.  I said the anti-western folks will be anti-western regardless of what we do or not do.  There's a significant population that might sway one direction or the other, but my experience in Iraq amounted to while they might hate the US for being in Iraq, they equally hated the insurgents who were planting the bombs.  We rarely dealt with the "I was cool with America, but then you came and destroyed everything!" terrorist that seems to keep showing up on TV and in the media.  The majority hated us before 2003, or even 1991, and were going to hate us if we gave them reason to hate us or not (we were accused of importing "special insect" to eat all of Iraq's crops.  I really cannot make up the distinct detachment from reality we dealt with).
 
And it did not change based on how kinnectic we were.  My first deployment we were ripping doors of hinges, and still dropping bombs in places.  If you cut into our convoy during our road movements, you were going to be staring down the barrel of a .50 cal in short order (we did not open up on anyone, most folks got the message).  Second deployment?  We couldn't enter a building without being invited in,* nothing had fallen off a plane and exploded in well over a year.  We let the traffic just flow in and around our movements, no big deal.
 
And the hate and hostility was there regardless of how nice we were, or rough we were.  We were the infidel invader of terrible to that population of people.
 
So to that end the folks we actually worry about, the actual "going to try to kill people" folks are largely, and almost entirely the sort of folks who'd hate us and try out the whole terrorism thing anyway.  It happened before drones, it'll keep happening after drones, with the overwhelming majority having an opinion on same, but the number of "new" anti-American folks is negligible.  
 
 
*Unless it was self defense, like we'd been shot at from the building, or needed cover

Just wanted to say hello. I just purchased the game and am very excited to have a game that is so complex. Reading through the forums I can see that this is a very serious community with great information. 
 
i am myself a combat Infantry veteran and purple heart recipient. I was a member of the Army's very first stryker battalion 1-23 INF during the experimental phase and deployed with them twice to Iraq. I had ICV 0004 so I am pleased to see a game that allows me to use that old tactical noodle again. Looking forward to learning from you guys and being a part of this community.

To steal a Leonard Cohen line, it's better than being blinded by the beauty of our weapons.
 
 
On the other hand in all but Somalia (which is really a question of "what government?" and above table Pakistan (basically they've opted to on the government-military side condone the strikes, while still doing public outrage) US drone operations are sanctioned by the legal governments of said states.  
 
I'm....not going to be insulting but the "bringing in front of a judge" aspect is about as reasonable as "simply waltzing in and arresting Hitler."  A raid isn't just a few guys hop on a helicopter, swoop in with search warrants in hand on a moment's notice.  The sort of raids I described earlier were largely possible because of how the urban operation restricted terrorist movements (the various checkpoints meant the terrorists had to live fairly close to their operational areas, heavy security simply meant that it was blatantly obvious where they lived etc etc).  In dealing with many of these targets:
 
1. Local government is complicit/too weak to effectively deal with the target
2. The window to do something about this guy is very narrow
3. The target is in a place much too risky to send in conventional forces without significant loss (or basically asking the question of if it's worth the risk to lose the lives of several soldiers, a few million dollars of hardware so we can go through the legal procedure to show that this guy who we have a small mountain of evidence showing what a bad, bad man he is is in fact a bad bad man that we want to put in jail).
 
Even beyond that looking at historical counter-insurgencies or counter terrorism operations, bringing someone to trial has rarely been the historical case outside of domestic situations, or cases in which the targeted individual either survived the raid somehow, or was apprehended in a way that prevented them from being able to fight back.  The difference now is drones have the endurance and sensor fidelity to loiter over possible target locations, and the sensor fidelity to do the sort of "kill" it used to take big burly men with lots of guns to do.
 
 
The French, Israelis, the UK and countless other countries have all practiced the same exact tactic of international assassinations against various threats.  We're not talking about something "new" we've just hit that point where targeting and shooter technology has combined to allow for the sort of operations that used to exist purely in fevered dreams.  
 
However in terms of "what I have done" uh, yeah sort of missing the point to a large degree.  As:
 
1. The targets are folks who belong to organizations that have historically targeted the west because allah said its righteous.
2. Folks who support an unstable Afghanistan were stoning remains the legitimate means of judicial punishment
3. Folks who believe jihad is the one true path and if they explode enough people allah will smile on their dreams
 
That's sort of making it a bit glib, but these folks are opposed to us not for yesterday's acts, but for a long lasting historical grievances and perceived slights (US TROOPS NEAR MECCA HARRAM!!!!!).  If it was not the US, then it'd be the oh wait they did the UK.  Well if it wasn't the US and the UK it'd be Franc...oh crap.  Okay they did them too.  Well if it wasn't the US, the UK, France, it'd be the Spani...well damnit.  Even in the event of total US departure from the middle east, they'd still be blowing up Americans because of our cultural assault on Islam, or because we did not pay the ransom to not blow us up because allah commands it.  It's not as simple as it seems.
 
It's also not something we can kill our way out of, but the blowing up folks who are dead set on killing Americans is sort of symptoms management for the disease.  We've however mistaken it for the cure which is really more than a small problem.  
 
 
Again, Steve addressed this pretty well.  You can hold the US accountable for:
 
1. The post invasion chaos.  There really wasn't a good plan for that.
2. Disbanding the Iraqi Army.  That created a lot of the low-level trigger puller type insurgents for the Sunni population.
 
The dead Iraqis bloating in the Tigris, the exploding Mosques, the "mentally handicapped children as bomb transportation" tactic, and the VBIEDs in markets is something the Iraqis can take the lion's share of blame for.  It's my fault if I fire you for no good reason.  Your fault if your anger causes you to rape and murder a few people.
 
 
And it's very arrogant to assume we break everything too though.  In a lot of ways it's handy to blame things on "The West" but the troubles of the middle east reach all the way back well past colonialism.  We give ourselves a lot of credit for the power to do both good and bad, and frankly, too much credit for either.  
 
That's really the powerless moment you feel in Iraq.  No matter what you say, what you do, how many times you point out that Shia are people too, there's Sunnis that believe they're pretty much satan worshippers and allah will only smile when all of them are dead.  The looting anything worth money regardless of community benefit is something no amount of "west" could fix, nor the corruption.  No amount of attempt to foster small business with loads or grants would help as long as it was simply seen as a way to scam the Americans (which made it darkly funny in a way, the small grants we gave were totally enough to set up a good shop, or make your current shop much bigger, but nooooo, we're going to buy expensive stuff that's going to get stolen by our jealous neighbor, and then cry to the Americans for more money).
 
 
If I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, doesn't mean I can't call you a murderer for shooting down Nancy Sinatra.  Further I'd like to think my experience on the ground sets a nice contrast.  I have yet to shoot anyone.  I did however open several schools, briefly restore power to a neighborhood before the generator was looted, provide key tracking of displaced persons, and while I was at it release some prisoners back to their families.  As much as the American way of war can bring devastation, we're very conscious of doing "good" even if it's the kind of "good" I mentioned that can turn out "terrible" once it's actually implemented.
 
Contrast this to the Russian army which can give locusts a run for it's money, if locusts could rape and install puppet governments.  That's actually rather another reason I strongly dislike the Russian military, it's like having another company that does what you do, only sans morality, decency, and gloats about how it gets away with a lack of either.  Which almost loops back onto the topic, it's why I hate the Russian "victory" day parades.  They're in effect celebrating the nightmare they brought through Eastern Europe, the Stalinist oppression of thousands of innocent people, and the systematic rape and looting of anything with a correctly sized set of holes, or that could fit on a train back to Moscow.  It's like if the US Army had a "Wounded Knee Victory Parade" or the Brits held a festival to celebrate the first use of the maxim gun on indigenous people.  Then pair it with being a celebration of a return to Russian militarism and it just honestly gets sort of sick in that regard.  

There is an idealized view of our past for sure.  
 
Either way not entirely trusting one's government, even when you're working for it is hardly a bad idea.  It's not even in the sense that the government is out to get anyone, or is malicious, just that it's a big organization with most people trying to do some shade of the "right thing" some people doing the wrong things, and then some people counting down the years until they can retire while shoving the paperwork they're supposed to be doing into a very large file cabinet and forgetting about it.  
 
I guess that's my experience at least.  It's rare anyone means to do ill, but often once an action has worked through the various agencies and the like it can become something quite nasty.  Lots of roads to hell paved with great intentions.  

Dunno.  Would we have batted an eye at killing some of the various Allied nationals that did work on behalf of the Axis?  There's plenty of German-American or Japanese-American folks who either found themselves stuck, or willingly answered the motherland's call, and were cut down without significant hesitation.  Where it gets fuzzy is the question of how legitimate some of these targets are at all in the  modern spectrum of non-conventional warfare.  Most of the very dead American targets unambiguous aided and abetted, or were in the active employ of organizations engaged in military conflict with the US government.  It's a far cry from making craters out of folks who simply disagree with US policy in the abstract.
 
The real debate should be a matter of targeting in terms of collateral damage (value of target vs damage inflicted to the populace) or national sovereignty in the cases of nations that at least above table, give no special permission for drones to operate in their air space (of course, finding a government in some of these places would be difficult).
 
But in terms of the intended targets?  They're folks who'd declared an intent to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can with fairly little discrimination.  That's pretty much hostile intent enough for me to sleep easily when that individual is made into meatpaste (but have some moral reservations when he's meatpasted with the family next door, if the intended target is just some low level dude).
 
 
The western system works for the west because it evolved and grew as western ideals and the like evolved.  It's a system designed for our way of thinking and our way of life.  Thusly it's good for Yankee imperialists, sneering British colonialists, and the French (no prefix required, name is sufficient to imply what I was getting at), but a poor fit for sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and somesuch.  They need a culturally well adapted system of government, and through colonialism, they lost some of that growth, and our continued attempts to make them more like us, we're doing them a disservice.  
 
In terms of the chaos of Iraq, I've said it before but it was coming regardless of who started it.  Centuries of Sunni-Shia conflict, and decades of Sunni minority rule were going to boil over someday (see Syria for a reversal of roles in terms of Shia minority rule over a Sunni majority, with a very similar history of oppression and mass killings).  If it was not the US invasion, it'd have been the fighting between Saddam's sons in 2024 after the old man kicked the bucket, the Arab Spring, or any number of crises.  It's arrogance to assume that the west is powerful enough to change the 3rd World for the good because it's the west, just as much as it is to assign blame for all the problems of the present to western whatever.  
 
I simply advocate we keep our meddling limited to our own interests in a low threat sense (if we do not like your way of doing things, we do not have to do business, vs invasions), the military involvement to breaches of the peace/international law (invading neighbors, or for reals actual genocide sort of beaches of the peace)  and a broad support of human rights (we don't care HOW you rule, just as long as you don't fill your jails or ditches with your opponents).
 
 
I'm there too.  It just happens the russian government is well supported on the internet/military forums which tends to cast me in a more hostile light.  I wouldn't care what it did though so long as it did it within its own borders, and laid off on the nuclear bullying of poor Denmark though.  That doesn't mean I wouldn't make fun of Putin on ponies, just I'd recognize it's someone else's country, and if they dig that well, then it's sort of hilarious but whatever man.  

If we're going by the reputation I've acquired, all Russians are worse than Hitler, and even an ounce of Russian blood should condemn you to being eaten by a starved and enraged Micheal Moore.  
 
If I'm done being sarcastic:
 
It's really two different flavors of annoyed.  Here's the quick rundown:
 
 
1. Collectively the west is stupid for believing in "nation building."  I hold nations/nation-states are things that must grow organically.  When we go in and try to impose what works for the west on a society, it almost always will fail simply because it's a foreign influence.  When we go into a country and try to restore order the parties we usually work with are not the proverbial founding fathers we think we're working with, it's the folks who see us as a means to an end.  Sometimes that's an okay end, we've really found someone who wants to make crapistan a better place, and we've got the money to do that, but a lot of time it's marginal powers who see us as a way to bypass the major players, or folks just looking to scam as many millions as they can in reconstruction projects.
 
If Iraq 2003 really was a problem, I'd have simply done an Army level raid.  We announce we're going in, we're going to break everything worth breaking, destroy sites we view as a threat, blow up the crossed sabers monument in Baghdad to show we can do whatever we want, and we're going to leave and let Saddam deal with the mess.  And we're leaving crates of AKs and RPG-7s in select locations as parting gifts.  We firmly establish why we're going in, why we'll come back to burn the village down again, and then leave the country alone.
 
This open ended commitment to make a country work better because somehow by being 'merica just does not work.  The post World War Two occupations succeeded not because of us, but because we were able to enable the folks who were willing to comply with our standards (no more Hitler, no more big military, no more goosestepping!) with resources, but effectively the Germans and the Japanese rebuilt their countries because they wanted to rebuild them, and recognized they if they did not play nicely they'd get bombed all over again.
 
It's not the most polite way to go about it, but looking at the "progress" the billions of dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan it bears questioning if we're just better off focusing on stopping folks from doing things they shouldn't do, and letting nations build themselves (and offering voluntary incentives, if you're willing to turn over Saddam's head on a platter, we'll  chip in a few billion to refurb that oil refinery you really need working again).
 
My frustration with Iraqis came from the fact they kept indulging in very self destructive choices for short term gain.  In the wider view it makes sense as given Iraq from the 1980's on, anything long term rarely panned out, but grabbing the money and running was highly successful in the short term.   But in terms of rebuilding, it meant you'd at risk and expense install a generator to provide power for the local community, and then six hours later it's been stripped down to pieces and is being sent up to Turkey to be sold as scrap as the pennies on the hundreds of dollars of investment in the generator is worth more to someone than having reliable electricity.  And then the local community basically just sitting and watching it happen because maybe they can steal the wires the guy didn't take and sell those!
 
George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" is strongly illustrative of the feelings of being in Iraq, in terms of having all the power to murder the heck out of everything, but being ultimately unable to change the behavior of the locals, or address the underlying problems in their community.
 
And onto shooting Russians:
 
2. Prior to the Ukrainian mess, I did not especially have positive impressions of Russia, but I held them on par with the French in many ways.  Fiercely proud, very capable of doing things I found silly, and easily offended when I made fun of said silly things.  On the other hand while I found things like their treatment of homosexuals offensive, or their belligerent posturing to be bothersome, it was still done well within their own space, and it did not strongly intersect with the rest of the world at large.  I even referred to them as "ultra-Ukraine" on a few occasions as a way of explaining how the US viewed Russia on a whole, something marginally related to our foreign policy, with fairly minimal trade or cultural links.  Basically something to be occasionally mocked for hating gay people, while at the same time, their president acted in a way that'd be considered flamboyant in some parts of San Francisco, but not much else.
 
The crossing into the Ukraine was a line for me, because its very much your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins. Russia can do whatever it wants to itself, but by god invading the Ukraine because it decides it isn't especially in favor of a government that increasingly is not representative of the national will (which then shoots down a bunch of folks in the street) is well beyond what is within the "right" of Russia to do.  Then toss in the unambiguous lies and denials, and the whole polite men pile of feces, and it's enough to turn "lol Russia" to "please go find a spike to sit and spin on" levels of distaste.  And it's a shameful pattern of behavior reaching back through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yalta, Poland, Latvia, Finland, etc, etc, etc.  If Russia was content to play by civilized rules, and use economic/diplomatic channels to express its distaste, that's fine.  That's its right to not do business with folks it disagrees with.  That's its right to not engage with a new government.  And even if the Ukraine had been oppressing Russians, going before the UN and making the case for it would be a logical next step.
 
But nope!  It's time for polite men, invasions, and then trying to provoke a war with the Ukraine.  
 
All of which gets to the point where needless to say, I have a very low opinion of the Russian government, its supporters, and its policies.
 
re: Kettler
 
Look, yeah pointing out that some of his stuff is nuts is a bit of stating the barn is red.  But what does it accomplish?  We all know he's a bit off his rocker, but occasionally he posts something interesting, or at least on topic.  You don't have to read or respond to him, I don't read everything he writes obviously, but generally he's politely a bit nuts.  If you don't like what he writes, ignore it, if you're like me and at least skim it, respond to the stuff that's more or less on topic if you'd like, but you're no worse the wear for him chugging along and Kettlering it up.  Posting that he's a bit nutter doesn't make him less nutter, and we've all agreed tanks in space and the USN-Alien-Vampire war is loony.  Do we need to talk about it more than that.? 
 
Addendum:

 
 
I think everyone at age 19 is a little dumb.  It's one reason now than I'm older I'm glad the younger population does not vote (or throws the vote effectively away).  Looking back on college I can see a lot of head against wall level stupid beliefs in both my peers of the day, and myself from all ends of the political spectrum.  

well imo, humble as it is, every other ww2 title has at least one module, some a few. RT has none. thatd be my reason why it should get some love first..

This was last month happening in front of my house, remembrance of the liberation of Groningen, start of the 4-day battle here on April 13, 1945.
 

Here is some music to listen to while watching the parade:
 

Here's a 2-story house you can soon destroy:
 

 
   
 

Ambush: trading five for ten.
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

- - - - - - With a few simple mouseclick you can change a picture like this... - - - - to look like this...     I think this is pretty cool...Hope you do too...      

I´ve just uploaded a set of weathered Nashorns for CMFI and CMRT to GAJ´s  The sets in each section are identical, so you´ll only need to download one of them.
 
Actually, I hadn´t planned to make any Nashorn mods, as Aris has already released a very fine Nashorn. But a few days ago I released a Hummel mod for CMBN, and since the files are almost identical I figured I might as well convert the Hummel into a Nashorn as well.
 
Choose one of five different camo options.
 
 

If, on opening a new user made scenario I discover that one entire side- normally my side- is rated Crack or higher that scenario is immediately deleted. Either the designer has an unrequited German (it's seldom the Allies) uber troop fixation or he's trying to force a certain narrative. And that's leaving aside the improbability that every man down to one's ammo bearers and truck drivers conform to that lofty standard.
 
Note that experience inflation is NOT characteristic of BF's in-house scenarios. These guys know what they're doing.

The basic German defense doctrine was the one they developed during WW I to avoid being defeated by local concentration and artillery suppression, and it remains the basic system the Germans used in the east.  That tactical system has been called the denuded front, in comparison with practice near the start of WW I of lining continuous front line trenches with solid lines of riflemen.  Instead it was based around a few fortified machinegun positions, concealed, and cross fired to cover each other rather than their own front, in an interlocking fashion.  The idea being to make it hard to take out just a piece of the scheme.  Most forces were kept out of the front line to let enemy artillery "hit air".  Wide areas were covered by barrage fire and obstacles (in WW I generally just wire, in WW II plenty of mines as well).  Barrages and obstacles have the feature that they multiple in their effectiveness the more then enemy sends; his local odds does not help him, it hinders him or raises his losses instead.  The MG and outpost network is meant to defeat penetration by smaller enemy numbers, while barrages crucify their masses if they overload those.
 
Then the main body of the defending infantry defends from considerably farther back, and executes local counterattacks into portions of the defensive system reached by the attackers.  The idea is to spend as much prep barrage time as possible deep in underground shelters, and only come up and forward to mix it up with enemy infantry after they are mixed in with your own positions and hard for the enemy to distinguish and coordinate fires on them etc.  This also was meant to exploit the confusion that even successful attackers were generally in, after crossing the outpost and barrage zone described above.
 
That is an effective enough system, but it isn't foolproof.  The thinner front and separated strongpoint positions it uses are vulnerable to stealthy penetration, night infiltration e.g., rather than frontal attack on a large scale.  The local counterattack part of the doctrine can be taken to extremes and get rather expensive for the defenders, resulting in mere brawling inside the defender's works, and just exchange off with the more numerous attackers.  What it really relies on is the enemy being defeated by the artillery fire scheme and ranged MG fire over most of the frontage, so that the counterattack and brawl stuff only happens in a few exceptional spots, where the defenders have a safer route to the front, better information about where the enemy is, what routes are left clear of obstacles, and the like.
 
The main line of resistance, once hit, generally tried to solve the fire discipline dilemma by firing quite late, when the attackers were close enough to really destroy them, not just drive them to ground.  Harassing mortar fire and a few "wait a minute" MGs were all that fired at longer ranges, to delay the enemy and prevent them being able to maneuver easily, mass in front of the defenders safely, and the like.
 
At a higher level, the division's artillery regiment commander, divisional commander, or regional "Arkos" tried to manage the larger battle by choosing where to intervene in the outcoming attack with the weight of divisional fires.  They didn't distributed those evenly, or according to need.  Instead they would have a plan of their own, to stop the Russians cold in sector B, and just make do in sectors A and C.  They divide the attack that way.  Then shift fires to one of the break ins, and counterattack the other one with the divisional reserve.  The basic idea is just to break up the larger scale coordination of the offensive by imposing failure where the defenders choose, by massing of fires.  They can't do this everywhere, but it can be combined with choices of what to give up, who pulls back, what the next good position is, and the like, as a coordinated scheme.  The function is "permission" - you only get forward where I let you get forward, not where you want it.  If the enemy tries to get forward in the place the defenders "veto" in this way, they just mass their infantry under the heaviest artillery and multiple their own losses.
 
I should add, though, that those doctrinal perfect approaches sometimes could not be used in the conditions prevalent in parts of Russia.  In the north, large blocks of forest and marsh are so favorable for infiltration tactics that separate strongpoints with only obstacles in between just invite penetration every night and loss of the position.  The Germans often had to abandon their doctrine in those areas, in favor of a continuous linear trench line.  And then, they often didn't have sufficient forces to give that line any real depth, but instead had to defend on line, manning that whole front as best they could.  In the more fluid fighting in the south, on the other hand, the Germans could and did use strongpoint schemes.  The Russians got significantly better at night infiltration as a means to get into or through those, as the war went on.
 
Against Russian armor the German infantry formations also had a harder time of it.  In exceptional cases they could prepare gun lines with enough heavy ATGs well enough protected and sited to give an armor attack a bloody nose, but normally they were not rich or prepared enough for that.  Keep in mind that the Russians were quite good at tank infantry cooperation in their mech arm - by midwar that is, early they hadn't been - but lagged in the development of tank artillery cooperation.  Which is what tanks need to deal with gun based defenses efficiently.  The German infantry formations themselves tried to just strip tanks of their infantry escorts and let the tanks continue.  The Russians would sometimes make that mistake, and send the tanks deeper on their own.  That put them in the middle of a deep German defense that would know more about where they were and what they were doing than vice versa.  But that is really an "own goal" thing - if the Russian tanks just stayed with their riders and shot the crap out of the German infantry defenses, the Russian doctrine worked fine.
 
On a deeper level, the Germans relied on their own armor to stop Russian armor.  Brawling frontally with reserves, often enough, sometimes aided by superior AFVs.  Sometimes by counterattacks that sought to cut off the leading Russian spearheads, and prevent their resupply (with fuel above all).  That worked less and less well as the war went on, however, because the Russians got better at keeping multiple threats growing on the map, gauging defender strength correctly and waiting for all arms to consolidate gains, and the like.  There was also just less of the fire brigade German armor later in the war, and it had less of an edge in tactical know-how.
 
There are also some weaknesses of the Russian doctrine that the Germans tried to exploit.  It can be quite predictable.  You can let them succeed at things to draw them in, in a pretty predictable way.  The Russian mech way of attacking was at its best against infantry defenses, or vs armor against heavily outnumbered defenders.  If they pushed too hard at a strong block of armor, they could get a brigade killed in a matter of hours.  If you have such an asset, you can try to string the two together - let them hit a weak spot precisely where you want them to come on hard into your planned kill sack.  They aren't doing a lot of battlefield recon to spot such things, they are mostly relying on speed to create surprise.  If you let them think they just made a brilliant and formula perfect break in, they are apt to drive hard trying to push it home, and not to suspect that its is a trap.  But a lot of things get easier if you have a Tiger or Panther battalion lying around, don't they?

Aured - Did the Russians use the same fire and maneuver tactics with typical triangle tasking used by the US in WW II?  No they did not.
 
Did they understand the basic principles of fire and maneuver, sure.  But the whole army was organized differently, tasked differently, placed less reliance on close coordination with artillery fires, wasn't based on small probes by limited infantry elements to discover the enemy and subject him to more of those fires, etc.  Basically there are a whole host of army-specific optimizations in US tactics that just don't apply.
 
The Russian force is divided into its mechanized arm and the rifle arm (called "combined arms" at the army level, but still distinct from mech).  Each had its own specific mix of standard tactics.  There are some common elements between them, but you should basically think of them as two distinct doctrines, each tailored to the force types and operational roles that type had.  Conceptually, the mech arm is the arm of maneuver and decision and exploitation, while the rifle arm is the arm of holding ground, creating breakthroughs / assault, and general pressure.  The mech arm is numerically only about a tenth of the force, but is far better armed and equipped, and controls more like 2/3rds of the armor.
 
The Front is the first element of the force structure that does not respect this distinction and is entirely above it, and Fronts are not uniform in composition, but always contain forces of both types (just sometimes only limited amounts of the mech type).  From the army level down to the brigade level, the distinction applies at one level or another.  Below that level it still applies but cross attachments may blur somewhat, but normally at all lower levels one has clearly either the mech or the rifle force type and uses the tactics appropriate to that type.
 
The army level is the principle control level for supporting elements and attachments - much higher than in other armies (e.g. for the Germans it was almost always the division level, with little above that level in the way of actual maneuver elements). The army commander is expected to "task" his pool of support arms formations to this or that division-scale formation within his command for a specific operation, depending on the role he has assigned to that formation.  This can easily double the organic weapons of such formations, and in the combined arms armies, is the sole way the rifle divisions get armor allocated to them.  What are we talking about here?  Independent tank brigades and regiments, SU regiments, heavy mortar regiments, rocket brigades and battalions, antitank brigades and regiments, motorcycle recon regiments and battalions, extra pioneer battalions, heavy artillery formations from regiment up to divisions in size, etc.  Basically, half of the guns and all of the armor is in the army commander's "kit bag" to dole out to his divisions depending on their role.  A rifle division tasked to lead an attack may have a full tank brigade attached, plus a 120mm mortar formation to double its firepower at the point of the intended breakthrough.  Another rifle division expected to defend on relatively open ground, suited to enemy tanks, may have an antitank artillery brigade attached, tripling its number of 76mm guns, and a pioneer battalion besides, tasked with mining all likely routes and creating anti tank ditches and other obstacles, etc.
 
Every division is given enough of the supporting arms to just barely fulfill its minimal standard role, and everything needed to do it better is pooled up in the army commander's kit bag, and doled out by him to shape the battle.  Similarly, the army commander will retain major control of artillery fires and fire plans.  Those are not a matter of a 2nd Lt with a radio calling in his target of opportunity, but of a staff of half a dozen highly trained technicians drafting a coordinated plan for days, all submitted to and approved - or torn up - by the army commander.  This highly centralized system was meant to maximize the impact of very scarce combined arms intelligence and tactical skill, which could not be expected of every green 2nd Lt.  
 
Within the rifle divisions, each level of the org chart has its own organic fire support, so that it does not need to rely on the highest muckety-muck and his determination that your sector is the critical one today.  When he does decide that, he is going to intervene in your little corner of the world with a weight of fire like a falling house; when he doesn't, you are going to make do with your assigned peashooters.
 
The divisional commander is assigning his much smaller divisional fires on the same principles, with the understanding that those smaller fires become not so small if the army commander lends him an extra 36 120mm mortars for this one.  The regimental commander may get his share of the divisional fires or he may get nothing outside what his own organic firepower arms can supply - but he gets a few 76mm infantry guns and some 120mm mortars and a few 45mm ATGs so that he can make such assignments even if he gets no help.  Frankly though the regiment adds little - it mostly assigns its battalions missions, and the regimental commander's main way of influencing the fight is the formation he assigns to those component battalions.  Formation in the very simplest sense - he has 3 on line to cover a wide front, or he has 3 in column on the same frontage to provide weight behind an attack, or the 2-1 or 1-2 versions of either of those.  It is not the case that he always uses 2-1 on all roles.  The most common defense is 2-1 and the most common offensive formation is column, all 3 one behind the other on the same frontage.  Notice, this isn't about packing the riflemen in - those will go off in waves at proper intervals front to back.  But it puts all 27 of the regiment's 82mm mortars (9 per battalion) in support behind 1 or 2 kilometers of front line.
 
The fire support principle at the battalion level is not implemented by having one of the component battalions support the others by fire from a stationary spot, with all arms.  Instead it is a combined arms thing inside each battalion.  They each have their 9 82mm mortars and their 9 Maxim heavy machineguns organized into platoons, and the "fire support plan" is based on those infantry heavy weapons.  Battalion AT ability is minimal - 2 45mm ATGs and a flock of ATRs, barely enough to hold off enemy halftracks and hopeless against whole battalions of tanks.  But that is because the higher muckety-mucks are expected to know where the enemy tanks are going to come and to have put all the army level ATG formations and their own supporting armor formations and the pioneers with their minefields and obstacles, in those spots.
 
Down inside the battalion, the same formation choices arise for the component rifle companies as appeared at battalion, and the usual formations are again 2-1 on defense and all in column on the attack.  And yes that means you sometimes get really deep columns of attack, with a division first stepping off with just a few lead companies with others behind them, and so on.  This doesn't mean packed shoulder to shoulder formations, it means normal open intervals 9 times in a row, one behind another, only one at a time stepping off into enemy fire zones.  These "depth tactics" were meant to *outlast* the enemy on the same frontage, in an attrition battle, *not* to "run him off his feet in one go", nor to outmaneuver him.  The later parts could be sidestepped to a sector that was doing better and push through from there.  The last to "pancake" to the front if the other had all failed, would not attack, but instead go over to the defensive on the original frontage and hold.  One gets reports of huge loss totals and those "justifying" the attack attempt when this happens - the commander can show that he sent 8/9ths of his formation forward but they could not break through.  It is then the fault of the muckety muck who didn't gauge the level of support he needed correctly or given him enough supporting fires etc.  If on the other hand the local commander came back with losses of only his first company or two and a remark that "it doesn't look good, we should try something else", he will be invited to try being a private as that something else, etc.
 
What is expected of the lower level commander in these tactics is that he "lay his ship alongside of the enemy", as Nelson put it before Trafalgar.  In other words, close with the enemy and fight like hell, hurt him as much as your organic forces can manage to hurt him.  Bravery, drive, ruthlessness - these are the watchwords, not cleverness or finesse or artistry.  
 
What is happening in the combined arms tactics within that rifle column attack?  The leading infantry companies are presenting the enemy a fire discipline dilemma - how close to let the advancing Russian infantry get before revealing their own positions by cutting loose.  The longer they take to do so, the close the Russian infantry gets before being driven to the ground.  Enemy fire is fully expected to drive the leading infantry waves to the ground, or even to break them or destroy them outright - at first.  But every revealed firing point in that cutting loose is then subjected to another round of prep fire by all of the organic and added fire support elements supporting the attack.  The battalion 82mm mortars, any attached tanks, and the muckety-mucks special falling skies firepower, smashes up whatever showed itself crucifying the leading wave.
 
Then the next wave goes in, just like the first, on the same frontage.  No great finesse about it, but some of the defenders already dead in the meantime.  Same dilemma for his survivors.  When they decide to hold their fire to avoid giving the mortars and Russian artillery and such, juicy new things to shoot at, the advancing infantry wave gets in among them instead.  And goes to work with grenade and tommy gun, flushing out every hole.  The grenadier is the beater and the tommy gun is the shotgun, and Germans are the quail.  Notice, the firepower of the infantry that matters in this is the short range stuff, because at longer range the killing is done by supporting artillery arms.  The rifles of the most of the infantry supplement of course, but really the LMGs and rifles are primarily there as the defensive firepower of the rifle formation, at range.
 
It is slow and it is bloody and it is inefficient - but it is relentless.  The thing being maximized is fight and predictability - that the higher muckety mucks can count on an outcome on this part of the frontage proportional to what they put into it.  Where they need to win, they put in enough and they do win - hang the cost.  It isn't pure suicide up front - the infantry go to ground when fired at and they fire back,and their supporting fires try to save them, and the next wave storms forward to help and pick up the survivors and carry them forward (and carry the wounded back).  In the meantime the men that went to ground are defending themselves as best they can and sniping what they can see;  they are not expected to stand up again and go get killed.  That is the next wave's job.  The first did its part when it presented its breast to the enemy's bullets for that first advance.  The whole rolls forward like a ratchet, the waves driven to ground holding tenaciously whatever they reached.
 
That is the rifle, combined arms army, way of fighting.
 
The mech way of fighting is quite different.  There are some common elements but again it is better to think of it like a whole different army with its own techniques.  Where the rifle arm emphasizes depth and relentlessly, the mech way emphasizes rapid decision and decisive maneuver, which is kept dead simple and formulaic, but just adaptive enough to be dangerous.
 
First understand that the standard formation carrying out the mech way of fighting is the tank corps, which consists of 3 tank and 1 rifle brigade, plus minimal attachments of motorized guns, recon, and pioneers.  The rifle brigade is 3 battalions and is normally trailing the tank brigades and holds what they take.  Sometimes it doubles their infantry weight and sometimes it has to lead for a specific mission (force a river crossing, say, or a night infiltration attack that needs stealth - things only infantry can do), but in the normal offensive case it is just driving up behind something a tank brigade took, dismounting, and manning the position to let the tank brigade go on to its next mission.  It has trucks to keep up, and the usual infantry heavy weapons of 82mm mortars and heavy MGs, but it uses them to defend ground taken.  Notionally, the rifle brigade is the tank corps' "shield" and it maneuvers it separately as such.
 
The business end of the tank corps is thus its tank brigades, which are its weapons.  Each has a rifle battalion organic that is normally physically riding on the tanks themselves, and armed mostly with tommy guns.  The armor component of each brigade is equivalent in size to a western tank battalion - 50-60 tanks at full TOE - despite the formation name.
 
I will get to the larger scale tactics of the use of the tank brigades in just a second, but first the lowest level, tactical way the tanks with riders fight must be explained.  It is a version of the fire discipline dilemma discussed earlier, but now with the critical difference that the tanks have huge firepower against enemy infantry and other dismounts, making any challenge to them by less than a full panzer battalion pretty suicidal.  What the tanks can't do is force those enemy dismounts to open fire or show themselves.  Nor can the tanks alone dig them out of their holes if they don't open fire.  That is what the riders are there to do - kill the enemy in his holes under the overwatch of the massed tanks if and only if the enemy stays low and keeps quiet and tries to just hide from the tanks.  That threat is meant to force the enemy to open fire.  When they do, the riders drop off and take cover and don't need to do anything - the tanks murder the enemy.  Riders pick their way forward carefully after that, and repeat as necessary if there are enemy left alive.  This is all meant to be delivered very rapidly as an attack - drive right at them, take fire, stop and blast for 5 or 10 minutes tops, and move forward again, repeating only a few times before being right on or over the enemy.
 
So that covers the small tactics of the mech arm on the attack.  Up a bit, though, they are maneuvering, looking for enemy weak spots, especially the weak spots in his anti tank defenses.  And that follows a standard formula of the echelon attack.  
 
Meaning, the standard formation is a kind of staggered column with the second element just right or left of the leading one, and the third off to the same side as far again.  The individual tank brigade will use this approach with its component tank companies or pairs of companies, and the whole corps will use it again with its brigades.
 
The first element of such an echelon attack heads for whatever looks like the weakest part of the enemy position - in antitank terms - and hits it as hard as it can, rapidly, no pausing for field recon.  The next in is reacting to whatever that first one experiences, but expects to wrap around one flank of whatever holds up the prior element and hit hard, again, from a slightly changing direction.  This combined hit, in rapid succession, is expected to destroy that blockage or shove it aside.  The third element following is expected to hit air, a hole made by the previous, and push straight into the interior of the enemy position and keep going.  If the others are checked, it is expected to drive clear around the enemy of the harder enemy position - it does not run onto the same enemy hit by the previous elements.  If the enemy line is long enough and strong enough to be neither flanked nor broken through by this process, well tough then.  Some other formation higher in the chain or two grids over is expected to have had better luck in the meantime.
 
There are of course minor adaptations possible in this formula.  If the lead element breaks clean through, the others shift slightly into its wake and just exploit - they don't hit any new portion of the enemy's line.  If the first hit a position that is clearly strong as well as reasonably wide, the other two elements may pivot outward looking for an open flank instead of the second hitting right where the first did, just from a different angle.  The leading element can pull up short and just screen the frontage if they encounter strong enemy armor.  Then the second still tries to find an open flank, but the third might slide into reserve between and behind the first and second.
 
The point of the whole approach is to have some adaptability and flexibility, to be designed around reinforcing success and hitting weaker flanks not just frontal slogging - all of which exploit the speed and maneuver power of the tanks within the enemy's defensive zone.  But they are also dead simple, formulas that can be learned by rote and applied mechanically.  They are fast because there is no waiting for recon pull to bring back info on where to hit.  The substance that needs to be grasped by the leader of a 2nd or 3rd element is very limited, and either he can see it himself or the previous element manages to convey it to him, or gets it up to the commander of all three and he issues the appropriate order downward.  They are all mechanically applying the same doctrine and thinking on the same page, even if out of contact at times or having different amounts of information.  The whole idea is get the power of maneuver adaptation without the delays or the confusion that can set in when you try to ask 3 or more bullheaded linemen to solve advanced calculus problems.  There is just one "play" - "you hit him head on and stand him up, then I'll hit him low and shove him aside, and Joe can run through the hole".
 
There are some additional principles on defense, the rifle formation forces specially,  where they use 2 up 1 back and all around zones and rely on stealth and field fortifications for their protection, while their heavy weapons reach out far enough to cover the ground between each "blob", and their LMGs and rifles reach out far enough to protect each blob frontally from enemy infantry.  That plus deeper artillery fires provides a "soft defense" that is expected to strip enemy infantry from any tanks, or to stop infantry only attacks on its own.  Or, at least, to make it expensive to trade through each blob in layer after layer, in the same "laying his ship alongside of the enemy", exchange-attrition sense.  Then a heavier AT "network" has to cover the same frontage but starting a bit farther back, overlapped with the second and later infantry "blobs".  The heavy AT network is based on cross fire by 45mm and 76mm ATGs, plus obstacles (watrer, ditches, mines, etc) to channel enemy tanks to the locations where those are dense.  Any available armor stays off the line in reserve and slides in front of enemy penetration attempts, hitting strength not weakness in this case, just seeking to seal off penetrations and neutralize any "differential" in odds or armor concentration along the frontage.  On defense, the mech arm operates on its own principles only at tank corps and higher scale, and does so by counterpunching with its offensive tactics, already described above.
 
That's it, in a nutshell.  I hope this helps.  

I attached a pdf file on some thoughts on how I make a QB Map. 
Making a Quick Battle Map.pdf

An other suggestion might be that if we for example rightclick the name in the purchase screen...parts of the in-game UI will be shown below.
 
Something like this...
 

 
This will only be possible with individual units and not the formations though...
 
 

Pioneer Platoon of 1st Infantry Battalion training to work with a Sherman Crab during their rotation at the Combat Engineer Course.
 

 

 

 
Lesson learned: Assume the minefield contains anti-tank mines and have infantry on the Hide command at least two action spots away from where the Crab is working.  

Recently I´m playing with heavy fog to avoid excess of visibility and conscripts to avoid Rambos. It works fine! Playing with house rules can make it more realistic. CM is so flexible.

The commander surveys the battlefield after the day is won.
 

This is the thread for my half of the experiment with @Method Gamer. The plan is to have me on the attack against him defending in the scenario Buying the Farm.  The goal is for this to be a good introduction for new players to how to play the game. Clearly my goal will be to execute a well thought out attack and use good tactics but the main purpose is to illuminate "the how" of playing the game.  We want to show how to use the game commands to guide your troops to bring your tactical decisions to life.

I know @Method Gamer in real life and we have worked together in the past but keep in touch now.  We live about a 10 minute drive away from each other.  Between himself and @Dungeon Tiger they introduced me to the CM series.  One day outside @Dungeon Tiger's office I heard them talking about a new version of one of their favorite games that had just been announced.  I'm not a big gammer (I only play CM games and the odd game with my kids but that is it) but I love hearing their stories.  But when I head about Combat Mission I could not believe it. They were describing the game I always wanted to play (I gave up miniature war games long ago due to lack of players and rules that got in the way and never did much for the fog of war).  So we bought the CM1x games CMAK and CMBB and the three of us played them the whole time we waited for CMBN to arrive.  Once CMBN arrived we never looked back.  Except I lost them, a couple of times.  They both gave up and stopped playing and started again.  I think this is due to the steep learning curve with the CM games.  I also think that the changes away from borg spotting were another large issue that @Method Gamer and @Dungeon Tiger had trouble figuring out how to play.  @Method Gamer plays a lot of Eve Online (I totally love to hear stories from that game) where he has been part of the corporation that teaches newcomers to the game how to play.  So, he has put a lot of thought into how to help people to learn to play.  In fact we have been discussing a couple of projects to help people learn.  This is just the first one that we are executing on.  To test the waters so to speak.

Over the last few weeks with the three of us playing against each other they hit problems and I shared solutions which is when @Method Gamer came up with first the idea that we should play an open game - like when you teach a new player poker by playing with everyone's hands exposed.  That quickly evolved into this concept.  Why play an open game between two of us and talk amongst our selves when we could do it with all of you?   More is better right.

So, here is the plan for this thread.  Both @Method Gamer and I will be posting and commenting in here (and his thread too).  This will be the place I post the AAR portions from my side of the battle but I want  you guys to join in with you tips and comments.  By all means talk tactics but more importantly talk execution share your tips on how to make the tactics happen.  Read both threads spill the beans - cause we are going to be reading both sides anyway.  Hopefully this will be a little different and helpful for future players.

IanL and I are trying a little experiment. We're going to play a CMBN mission with a DAR, but with a little twist: we'll be reading and commenting on each others' post as we're playing, and we invite everyone to post suggestions as well. Feel free to suggest strategies, tactics, orders, whatever you think we should do on our next turn.

Here's a bit of background on how this experiment came about. IanL and I are very good friends in the real world. As the forum regulars will know, IanL is a pretty serious CM player. He's a very active member on these and other boards, he's very knowledgeable about the game, and he's even written software to help players get more out of the game. I, on the other hand, am not that experienced with CMx2. While I own just about every CM game released by Battlefront (even the CMx1 titles), I've probably played less than a dozen CMx2 missions, all of them almost exclusively against IanL. To say that I get regularly pummelled by him would be an understatement.

During our last battle, we were discussing problems I was having as the defender. Clearly, everything was wrong: strategy, tactics, orders, etc. The chat eventually morphed into a broader discussion about how to get new players up to speed faster. Obviously, reading posts on the forums or on blogs (such as Bil Hardenberger's excellent Battle Drill) is a big help. But nothing really teaches something as complex as battle strategies and tactics like a skilled practitioner's experience. So we started comparing CM to other strategically and tactically complex games (like bridge or chess), and started thinking about how they train new players. One method they use is open play: a strong player plays against a newer player, and they talk aloud about what they're thinking and doing, and why. We thought this would be a good idea for CM, and that's how we ended up here.

Here's how we're going to proceed. IanL and I will follow the usual DAR format; we'll each start a thread discussing the mission from our respective sides. We'll provide screenshots and our thoughts on what we're PLANNING on doing and why. But before we actually give orders and send the turns, we'll read, comment and take advice from everyone on the boards, including from each other. We'll normally post our plans, and give forum members 24 hours to provide advice before playing our turns.

As mentioned in the inital paragraph of this post, if you have any questions or suggestions about anything we're doing, feel free to post. The idea here is to learn and get as much insight as possible into CMx2. There are a large number of skilled players, all with different strategies and tactics, tips and tricks, and I'd like to soak up as much as I can.

And remember, this is an experiment, feel free to comment on this idea as well.

Actually they do, but within the constraints of making sure it does not interfere with game development, which I would think you'd agree is a good priority.  Now the fact that they don't comment on every "this MUST be in the game post" is more likely a combination of that and that they simply disagree that your must list drives production.  Don't be offended, none of us has a must list that drives production.  They almost never comment on those posts.  Thank god or we'd never have a new game.
 
Also again note another slam at BF not caring "anymore".  That is just such a "head up the a**" proclamation that even you have to agree it is over the top.  Can you at least get your critiques down to "I'd really like to see this in the game" level and not make every suggestion a shot at BF.  The number of things that have been added or changed since CMBN (much less what was in CMSF) is huge.  Acting like BF never fixes or alters or adds anything is just pretty ridiculous.  It would also probably help your long term health as honestly you sound kind of stressed out.  BF has a track record of not bothering to reply to folks who so consistently slam them.  Why would they?  You are behaving like a "shi**y" customer and they have better things to do with their time. (I said like, I did not call you a shi**y customer).
 
You aren't on my ignore list because no one is.  If I feel there is absolutely no point in responding to you I won't. Or at least rarely when you post something that isn't just ridiculously over the top hyperbole. Seriously if you just changed your approach I think you'd find there is more agreement with you than disagreement.  It isn't the content of what you say, it is how you say it that generates most of the negative reaction you get. A lot of folks on this forum are past middle age.  We have been around the block a few times and our threshold for what is generally viewed as immature behavior (I want this now! I have been asking and asking and I don't get an answer!) that would never fly if we were all actually sitting around face to face is kind of low.  It might help when posting to visualize that sort of face to face contact and think how you would actually converse in that environment. If you post the way you'd actually do that type conversation, then I wouldn't be buying the next round.   I'd ask if you could rachet it down a notch as the bartender is eyeing us like he is about to ask us to leave and the waitress is avoiding our table.  More than likely I'd go sit somewhere else.  Maybe Ian has a spot open at his table...or better yet maybe with C3K's intern.
 
Now perhaps you simply don't care what folks think about your tone.  Fine, that is entirely up to you.  What you will find though is your ability to actually converse with folks on the forum will decline as folks will just not want to converse with you. Ian is a good guy.  There are a ton of things I know he'd like to change in game and he has some really great ideas- like the command line interface for launching a game that popped up again recently.  That request is like 4 years old now.  I don't see Ian jumping up on his chair and throwing a fit.  That isn't because he wouldn't like to see it nor that he thinks after 4 years it is overdue.  He simply takes into account everything else that has been done and figures it just isn't on BF's hit list yet.  He is patient because he knows BF has a list and it is likely far longer than any list we individually have.